Im your server tonight. Not what you might imagine at first: a young person, struggling through a UK undergraduate degree or one whose fate does not include higher educationa working-class stiff living to serve you. No, Im decked in dress-black, holding a pepper mill, and delicately narrating your specials, but Im knocking at 40s door, a veteran teacher, Ph.d candidate, and cover your tender earsbut probably smarter than you are. Howd I wind up here? Well, life morphs us funny ways, and my way kind of woke up about 35, a departmental chair in a private high school who was tired of learning to be expert on her own. All of a sudden, I wanted to be sitting in the presence of someone brilliant who could lecture to meinstead of me scraping to learn on my own and impart wisdom to my classrooms full of young women. I wanted to know more, and the cost was putting on an apronagainlike I was 20, and working as a TA til I either earned that Ph.d or figured Id heard enough of what others had to say. But, ironically, whats been the bigger education may have been whats happened behind the apron in one of Lexingtons finest eateries, filled on and off with horse people, politicians, business folk, andyes, men and women out for a leisurely meal before a message or yoga classthose folks with afternoons as open as prairies, who have no idea that I and my peers have devoted the late morning and afternoon to their crabcake lunch which cost, on average, $12 and makes us a whopping two dollars, which brings our hourly wage to $4did I mention my two Masters degrees? How much I love to comment on student paperswhen I find the time? My point is that Im not the person you think I am, as I grind pepper on your two-dollar salad.

And , even if I were who you assume I am, I think I might deserve to beto earn minimum wage, to get more than a condescending nod from you. But when I realize what waiting tables does to oneinsideI think I know why you, Herr Customer, don quite get it.

What I mean to say is, even my peers dont know who I am, dont see a person in meso why should you? Perhaps, permeated by our cultures ideas of what a service worker is, perhaps I dont even recognize this me, cinched into an apron and acting however you want me to act. Cinched and choking, I am a me who strangles the me who knows anything to death.

It may be that in serving you, I cant help doing a disservice to me. Perhaps Im thinking about it all too much. Perhaps you dont think about it enough.